“But she has a daughter:  no doubt she’s busy looking after her?” said Levin.

“I believe you picture every woman simply as a female, une couveuse,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.  “If she’s occupied, it must be with her children.  No, she brings her up capitally, I believe, but one doesn’t hear about her.  She’s busy, in the first place, with what she writes.  I see you’re smiling ironically, but you’re wrong.  She’s writing a children’s book, and doesn’t talk about it to anyone, but she read it to me and I gave the manuscript to Vorkuev...you know the publisher...and he’s an author himself too, I fancy.  He understands those things, and he says it’s a remarkable piece of work.  But are you fancying she’s an authoress?—­not a bit of it.  She’s a woman with a heart, before everything, but you’ll see.  Now she has a little English girl with her, and a whole family she’s looking after.”

“Oh, something in a philanthropic way?”

“Why, you will look at everything in the worst light.  It’s not from philanthropy, it’s from the heart.  They—­that is, Vronsky—­ had a trainer, an Englishman, first-rate in his own line, but a drunkard.  He’s completely given up to drink—­delirium tremens—­ and the family were cast on the world.  She saw them, helped them, got more and more interested in them, and now the whole family is on her hands.  But not by way of patronage, you know, helping with money; she’s herself preparing the boys in Russian for the high school, and she’s taken the little girl to live with her.  But you’ll see her for yourself.”

The carriage drove into the courtyard, and Stepan Arkadyevitch rang loudly at the entrance where sledges were standing.

And without asking the servant who opened the door whether the lady were at home, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked into the hall.  Levin followed him, more and more doubtful whether he was doing right or wrong.

Looking at himself in the glass, Levin noticed that he was red in the face, but he felt certain he was not drunk, and he followed Stepan Arkadyevitch up the carpeted stairs.  At the top Stepan Arkadyevitch inquired of the footman, who bowed to him as to an intimate friend, who was with Anna Arkadyevna, and received the answer that it was M. Vorkuev.

“Where are they?”

“In the study.”

Passing through the dining room, a room not very large, with dark, paneled walls, Stepan Arkadyevitch and Levin walked over the soft carpet to the half-dark study, lighted up by a single lamp with a big dark shade.  Another lamp with a reflector was hanging on the wall, lighting up a big full-length portrait of a woman, which Levin could not help looking at.  It was the portrait of Anna, painted in Italy by Mihailov.  While Stepan Arkadyevitch went behind the treillage, and the man’s voice which had been speaking paused, Levin gazed at the portrait, which stood out from the frame in the brilliant light